Posted
by
Soulskill
on Monday March 23, 2009 @02:58AM
from the new-and-shiny dept.

bomanbot writes "The team for the great turn-based, open-source strategy game Battle for Wesnoth has just released the new stable version 1.6 of their popular title. Some of the new version's highlights include a new campaign, new multiplayer scenarios, improved graphics and user interface, and new background music. The full release notes have been posted, and the source code and binary downloads for many different platforms including Linux, Windows and Mac OS X are available as well."

Bergkamp10 writes: As Microsoft's Office Open XML document format rests in ISO limbo, South Africa, Korea and Netherlands are now actively pursuing the alternative Open Document Format (ODF) instead (which was approved by the ISO as an open standard last year), said the ODF alliance.
South Africa is the first African country to adopt ODF as a government standard, and the Netherlands will start adding ODF support next April. In Korea, the government's Agency for Technology and Standards approved ODF as a national standard several months ago.
The ODF Alliance now claims 500 members, and by their count 13 nations have announced laws or rules that favor the use ODF over Microsoft's Office formats, such as Office Open XML.
Those nations include Russia, Malaysia, Japan, France, Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Germany and Norway. Not so suprising is the fact that the French have been the most aggressive in their rejection of Microsoft's standard; nearly half a million French government employees are being switched to OpenOffice.
There has been no similar move in the US, though in a speech at Google last week Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama called for data to be stored in "universally accessible formats."

DeviceGuru writes: It looks like Nokia is intent on knocking the ball out of the park with its Linux-powered Internet tablets. Today, the company unveiled the N810, its third attempt at hitting a home run with the concept. The new model adds a slide-out hardware keyboard, and also a built-in GPS receiver and FM transmitter (for in-car listening), among a number of other enhancements (such as a faster CPU and more memory). At this point, the device is positioned as an email and browsing tool, a social networking aid, a GPS, a VoIP phone, and a multimedia player (and streamer, thanks to built-in WiFi). But are the fans jumping out of their seats at this latest swing from mobile phone heavy-hitter Nokia?

GaryPatterson writes: We all had a bit of a laugh last week when Valve founder Gabe Newell said there were three reasons Apple doesn't help developers. He didn't so much list those reasons as talk around general issues. Today Tuncer from Inside Mac Games wrote a blog claiming Newell asked for a cool million dollars to port HL2 to the Mac. It's an interesting read and sheds a different light on Newell's recent comments.

destinyland writes: "Good news. The National School Boards Association, which represents 95,000 school board members, just released a report declaring fears of the internet are overblown. In fact, after surveying 1,277 students, "the researchers found exactly one student who reported they'd actually met a stranger from the internet without their parents' permission. (They described this as "0.08 percent of all students.") The report reminds educators that schools initially banned internet use before they'd realized how educational it was. Now instead they're urging schools to include social networks in their curriculum!"

By this point, everyone should know that broadband providers always provide "up to" speeds with the connections they sell. By "up to" they usually mean under perfect conditions that you will never, ever see. But just what kinds of speeds should you actually expect? A new study in the UK found that broadband speeds tend to be about a third of the "up to" speed. The worst speeds were about one-eighth of the promoted speed. As the article linked here notes, is it really any surprise that only 30% of people claim they're satisfied with their broadband? While it still seems like this should be false advertising, so far various regulatory bodies have said that the "up to" language is perfectly legal, no matter how misleading it may be. How hard would it be for an ISP to advertise expected speeds? I would imagine it would have happier, more loyal customers who know that the ISP is actually being honest, rather than hyping up speeds that will never be delivered.